Present there were senior party, army and state officials, the chairperson of a friendly party, deputies to the Supreme People's Assembly, leading officials of party, armed forces and power bodies, public organizations, ministries and national institutions and servicepersons of the Korean People's Army, officials in the fields of science, education, culture and arts, public health and media and working people in Pyongyang and the chief of the Pyongyang mission of the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front, congratulatory groups and delegations and home-visiting groups of overseas compatriots and other overseas compatriots.

Present there on invitation were diplomatic envoys of various countries and representatives of international organizations here, delegations of various countries and foreign guests now staying in the DPRK.

Kim Yong Il, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, in a report at the meeting said that the founding of the DPRK enabled the Korean people to become masters of state and emerge a mighty and dignified people carving out a new history of social progress and the building of a rich and powerful country, grasping their destinies in their own hands for the first time in the history of the Korean nation spanning 5,000 years.

With the birth of the DPRK it emerged a legitimate independent and sovereign state in the international arena and there appeared a new type socialist state which embodied the idea of independence of the popular masses based on the Juche idea, the first of its kind in the human history, the reporter noted, and continued:

Under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung, the DPRK achieved a historic victory in the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War against the U.S. imperialists' armed invasion, honorably defending the freedom and independence of the country. It successfully carried out the socialist revolution and vigorously accelerated socialist construction, thereby building a socialist state centered on the popular masses which demonstrates its might as a country independent in politics, self-supporting in economy and self-reliant in national defence and paving a wide avenue for the development of the country and the prosperity of the nation.

Kim Il Sung's Juche-oriented idea of nation-building and his exploits performed in it have been steadfastly carried forward by General Secretary Kim Jong Il and the DPRK has reached a new higher stage in its development.

Kim Jong Il published the famous work "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea Is a Socialist State of Juche with Invincible Might" last year. This constitutes an immortal exploit as he provided ever-victorious guidelines for building a socialist state in the era of Songun.

Thanks to the outstanding Songun revolutionary leadership of Kim Jong Il, Songun Korea, the country of Juche, is now towering high as a political, ideological, military and scientific and technological power, an envy of the whole world, and the Korean people have confidently come close to the gate to a thriving socialist nation.

Thanks to the Songun politics of Kim Jong Il and his independent foreign policy, the DPRK opened a new chapter of a nation-wide movement for national reunification guided by the idea of "By our nation itself" for the first time in the history of national division and the international prestige of the country and its influence have risen remarkably.

The reporter called on all the servicepersons of the KPA and people to hold Kim Il Sung in high esteem for all ages as the father of socialist Korea and eternal President of the DPRK and make the DPRK shine forever as the glorious state of Kim Il Sung.

He also underlined the need to actively uphold and faithfully implement the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration, a great programme for independent reunification, and the October 4 declaration, a programme for implementing it, and reenergize the movement for national reunification, taking "By our nation itself" as its basic idea.

The DPRK government will boost the solidarity with the peoples of all the countries in the world advocating independence, consistently holding fast to the idea of independence, peace and friendship and wage a dynamic struggle for building an independent and peaceful new world against aggression and war in the future, too.